Boogie Chillen'

In a Detroit studio in 1948, producer Bernard Besman realized that John Lee Hooker's intense, foot-stomping rhythm was getting lost in the mix. So, he placed a wooden pallet under Hooker's foot and aimed a microphone directly at his shoe. On "Boogie Chillen'," Hooker played entirely alone, laying down a hypnotic, one-chord electric guitar vamp over that relentless, booming foot-stomp. Half-singing and half-speaking, he described the buzzing atmosphere of Detroit's Hastings Street. The raw, primitive groove caught fire on jukeboxes across the country, becoming an unexpected number-one R&B hit and establishing Hooker's signature boogie sound.